excerpt from Michael Parenti's _Power and the Powerless_ (1978), p151:
"Religious institutions are financially linked to corporate America. Successful business people dominate church boards of most denominations and the churches themselves are deeply involved in secular, pecuniary affairs. With their lawyers, accountants, brokers, and managers, the churches preside over commercial empires that are indistinguishable from those of more profane organizations. The Catholic church and the leading Protestant denominations hold corporate investments valued at several billion dollars in defense and armaments, banking, housing, insurance, agriculture, utilities, pharmaceuticals, television, radio, publishing, liquor, and other enterprises. If religious organizations are conservative, it is not only because they are dependent on wealthy contributors but because they themselves are wealthy." Michael Hoover